.Mousepoxatrips Now!. "Watching a coast as it slip…

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Mousepoxatrips Now!

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“Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you– smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, ‘Come and find out.’ This one was almost featureless, as if still in the making, with an aspect of monotonous grimness.”*

The Vanx Pack is off to Disney World, where a good time will be had by all. I don’t plan to be luggin’ chips, so Verb-Ops will power down for a week or so.

Orlandiana: I (Shamu Interview) , II (Bowing East to Orlando)~ V V-O

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*From Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness

The Lost World Sure Gotta Bottle-Up ‘n’ Go If Dyl…

The Lost World
Sure Gotta Bottle-Up ‘n’ Go

If Dylan Thomas were still with us, he’d be slouched in a bar in the Ironbound penning an ode to the Pabst Blue Ribbon bottle–the big one that for 75 years served as the water tower for the bottling factory by the graveyard that runs along the Garden State Parkway in Newark. It came down yesterday.

I knew it was just a matter of time. I’ve been watching the wrecking ball take out swaths of Stockhouse 14, the big blue building under the bottle, for the last six months. I’d meant to take a photograph of the factory with the bottle tower before its demise—no mean feat, given that such a photo could only have been taken from the Parkway in a moving vehicle. Well, it’s too late now.

Indeed. And there goes, perhaps, the state’s most archetypical vista, encompassing, as it did, the Parkway, the graveyard, the factory and warehouse, and the row houses. It gave you more in a glance than you could get of most states from hours of driving the highway. The Sopranos, which has delivered a cinematic love poem to New Jersey for a decade now, used the scene as a backdrop for the bath-robed and deranged Uncle Junior on one of his lost and terrified ambles through Gangland.

The bottle, which cannot be granted landmark status now that it’s been taken down, will end up in one of several contending sites in Newark and along the Jersey Shore. It will be just another roadside attraction, whereas it used to dominate the natural landscape. It was Newark’s Mont Sainte Victoire.

Driving to work, I’ve generally made a point of looking up at the bottle every morning. This morning, I was rushing. I sped right past and didn’t notice it. On the other hand, it wasn’t there to notice! I got the news from the New York Times. I imagine I’ll experience a certain vertigo next time I look for it. I’ll just have to keep my eyes on the road.

So fare thee well, old brown jug,
Ye vessel the very shape of my heart.

Vanx

New York Times photos by Dith Pran (yes, that Dith Pran)

. This I Believe I believe that each of us is bo…

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This I Believe

I believe that each of us is born with the innate ability to play the rhythm guitar part to “Sweet Jane” by the Velvet Underground. The fact that so few of us actually do it is evidence of the ultimate cosmic shirk.~Vanx Verb-Ops

Americans from all walks of life share their personal philosophies and core values with the readers of Verb-Ops. So do several Europeans, Canadians, and a couple of ladies in Australia (We’re calling Istanbul Europe). Please join them. Just click on comments, and let your conscience be your guide. What do you believe?

. The Girls Last night Marguerite graduated from …

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The Girls

Last night Marguerite graduated from Grover Cleveland Middle School. So, the grade school years are finished for what I at one time thought would be my youngest daughter. My oldest looks forward to her senior year in high school in September. Things that had seemed so far in the future not very long ago just keep flashing by the window on the Cannonball Express that is life.

This train, of course, picked up a new caboose a few stations back—Lydia, girl number three. She put a wrap on first grade today. In another seven years, I’ll sit in the same stifling auditorium I sat in last night, grinning at the cavalcade of eighth graders, each teetering on the cusp of early-onset adulthood with one foot still on the playground. With a pure kind of pride that they will be too old to experience four years later, they’ll march up for diplomas. Some, as was the case last night, will wear Metalica T-Shirts, and some will sport awkward Windsor knots and semi-tucked-in shirts. The rest will stride by in dresses ranging from Springy to promish.

I will have a walker.

My kids are at an interesting stage right now. One spent the school year learning how to read, another how to drive. The girl in the middle made a noticeable transition form one of these worlds, childhood, into the other, teendom. I now have two high school girls in the house, which, to be honest, is actually kind of nice. They are getting along a lot better lately. Perhaps Emily’s imminent move to the next level–presumably “out”– is alleviating some kind of pressure that’s built up in recent years. Or maybe everybody is just growing up.

Lately, I’ve had a strange and completely unexpected feeling. A regret, actually. I regret, despite my preference all along for daughters, that I don’t have a son! This is really shocking. I’ve always felt that the father-daughter relationship suited me best, especially given that father-son relationships have been kind of screwed up on my side of the family for as far back as I know–which would be back to the non-existent relationship between my father and his. Lately, however, watching the older girls advance toward adulthood, I feel I’m missing a kind of relationship in my family that I didn’t miss at all when they were babies, kids, and tweens. What is it? Have I gotten over a fear of failing as the father of a boy? Or, after being completely surrounded by girls and women in my family for so many years, do I now seek refuge in some kind of male bonding? My father and I were beginning to relate to each other in a new way, man-to-man, I guess, just before he died. Maybe I’m remembering that. Or maybe it’s that most basic of midlife crises—the realization that, “this is it.” Whether or not I ever wanted it to happen—and I really didn’t—it ain’t a-gonna happen.

I’ll get over it.

This is Marguerite’s moment, after all, and of course I’m very proud of her. She has done remarkably well in school, and she has boldly broken from family tradition to do well at sports—basketball and soccer. I mentioned a couple of days ago that her soccer team won their division. Tomorrow, we are celebrating her birthday a few weeks early by taking Maggie and her friends to the shore. To Sandy Hook—that self-describing, furthest-north stretch of the Jersey Shore beaches, boasting the highest number of jail house tattoos per sunbather on the Eastern seaboard. It has a wonderful view of lower Manhattan on clear days. It’s a girl-watchers’ paradise.

School’s out!
Vanx

Painting by Andrey Tamarchenko

. Meanwhile, Back in the States… …

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Meanwhile, Back in the States…

I wasn’t kidding about that cheeseburger.

I love when the buzzcut in the customs booth at Newark Airport tells me, yeah, I can come back in. The first time it happened, I was returning to college from a trip to England in January,1979. The trip was a bit of a smack-down. I had always believed that people in European countries would be just as happy to meet a visiting American as we are to meet them when they come visit us. I learned, of course, that such reciprocity is not to be expected. Many nights on that trip to England, marked as an American by my down coat, I had the entire Vietnam War blamed on me personally by well-dressed Britons in the Underground. The only friend I made was a creepy criminal exile from South Africa. I hated him.

Over the years I’ve experienced various levels of anti-Americanism, and plenty of friendliness and pleasantness in the many formats in which these things make themselves known across the European Theater. I have lots of English friends now, and I love London. Oddly—wonderfully, actually—I have found that the individual Yank is treated quite nicely these days. Europe’s problem is with the Bush Administration, and there is a sense that we are all in this together.

English has become the “lingua franca,” and even the French who speak it don’t mind, particularly. Business is business. It’s humbling. Like most people my age and in my situation growing up, I found the idea of ever doing a day’s work in France or Germany completely outlandish. Americans never really learned another language, unless it was spoken at home by a parent or grandparent. Most Europeans understand this, or at least let us slide. The fact is, there is something about America that has nothing to do with neo-conservatism and is clearly still admired abroad. Blue jeans, rock ‘n’ roll, jazz, and hamburgers. Our open, friendly, loudmouth, garish nature is despised only by hardcore bores and biggots. Let’s face it. You gotta love us!~,:^)

And we have to love the rest of the world.

I left France delighted yesterday morning. I spent the last few minutes looking at the screeching little black birds flit in the breeze between the chimney pots as I stood at the Pissarro Room window in the eaves of the Hotel Bersolys. I smiled and thought that my short yet extravagant stay was pretty much perfect. I had just enough of France and I was ready to leave. I can replay in my mind the view and sounds from the window before I closed and locked the door.

I went downstairs and saw for the first time the sign across the street saying that Max Ernst, the symbolist painter, lived there for the last twenty years of his life. I pointed this out to the desk man, who was well aware of the sign. He told me that Christian Dior’s top designer, John Galliano, has his studio right up the beautiful but unassuming street. My daughter Emily says Galliano looks like a pirate. Interesting. The Rue de Lille has been my Parisian address since 1993—I’ll be back in October. J’aime le Rue de Lille! Till then…

Honey, disconnect the phone,
Vanx

Photo: Verb-Ops

. Elsewhere in World Travel… . Beaker in the Gob…

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Elsewhere in World Travel…

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Beaker in the Gobi Desert!

(Thanks again to globe-spanning, doll-toting Linda Wang)

.A Flitting Farewell. The Sunday Morning Bird Mark…

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A Flitting Farewell

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The Sunday Morning Bird Market

Isle de la Cité

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Well, it’s off to the USA, where I will churn out the goods on Geneva and write up my visits to the French chemical companies.

I’ve enjoyed sharing this little travelblog. See you soon, back in The States!

(Somebody get me a cheeseburger,)

Vanx

. Stark Athleticism On the Elysian Fields . As I w…

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Stark Athleticism
On the Elysian Fields
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As I write this, USA is about to tie Italy 1 to 1 after a grueling game with USA down two players and Italy down one. I didn’t watch the game as much as I looked in on it from time to time when I passed bars, cafes, and hotel lobbies during my last walk of the evening. In all, I must have walked at least ten miles around the city today, which is good, considering that the self-diagnosed osteoarthritis in my right leg will probably mean that I will need to be wheeled around the city on my next trip. I’ll at least be adding a cane to my routine, if only because you can get some cool looking canes.

The day began with a soccer theme, as a matter of fact. My first order of business was to find a store called Go Sport near a big church called La Madeleine. A Greek temple in appearance, La Madeleine was built in the 18th and 19th century in honor of Mary Magdalen. My daughter, Marguerite, whose travel soccer league team, the Caldwell Jaguars, just finished in first place, asked for a FIFA-approved ball. This would be a lot easier to purchase in Europe than in the US or on the web. I also had to make a run to the pharmacy, which is a fundamentally different experience here than going to the Walgreens or CVS stores I am more accustomed to. Things are cleaner and they sell less crap, which is nice. And everything is blue and green. There is a certain intimidating formality. Very old school.

I noticed on the way that the Musée de l’Orangerie doesn’t open until 12:30 pm. This glass-roofed pavilion greenhouse, built in the 17th century, served as an indoor citrus fruit garden for royalty until it was turned into an art museum in the 20th century. The structure was deemed a suitable venue for the eight large water lily or Nymphéa panels that Monet donated to France. After I got the ball, I made a plan that would bring me back to the museum at about 11:30. I started with a walk through the Tuileries gardens that stretch between the carrousel arch of the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde.

The Tuileries is a tree-lined walk over white stone and sand with a few small buildings on either side and a couple of big round pools on which people sail toy boats and around which people sunbathe. The Place de la Concorde is a busy but beautiful square with dangerous traffic and a famous sculpted water fountain. In the center is its hieroglyphic-carved obelisk perfoming its sundial function under a brilliant blue sky.

Continuing on, we enter the Champs Elysées near the Grand Palais, and the scene soon morphs into something like 42nd street with shops, theaters, hotels, stores, and tourists. It ends at the Arc de Triomphe. I took the Metro back to the l’Orangerie and waited in line for an hour with a voice major from Boston University who is discovering Europe this summer.

The Musée de l’Orangerie is a favorite of mine because it also houses the collection of Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume, which includes many Soutines, Utrillos, and Modiglianis. It just reopened after about five years of renovation to the building. The Monet Nymphéas are on the top floor, lit by the sun through the glass roof.

After the museum, I set off for La Marais, the traditional Jewish quarter, which is a beautiful place to stroll through. It has the Picasso Museum and the Hotel Carnavalet, a museum of the history of Paris featuring a great statue of Louis XIV in the courtyard and a cork-lined room replicating the one that the hypochondriac Proust wrote in. I walked back across the islands in the Seine and ate dinner near the Boulevard St-Michel on the left bank, during which I witnesses one of Paris’ many car-on-motor scooter collisions. Nobody got hurt, and the police don’t get involved. Names, insurance policy numbers, and Gittanes were shared, and everyone involved had an aparatif. After that, I basically did a lot of walking along the river as the book stalls closed and Saturday night got underway. People were hurrying off to cafes and restaurants or picnics down by the barges.

It’s after eleven now, the game did end in a tie. I’ll spend the next few minutes packing for the trip home so I will have time in the morning to take a walk. There is a great place to go on Sunday mornings in Paris. I’ll show you.

Until then,
Vanx
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Photos by Verb-Ops
Statue in the Tuileries
Arc de Triomphe
Louis XIV at the Hotel Carnavalet
Restaurant on the Quay Voltaire

. Jazz au Saint Germain des Pres . …

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Jazz au Saint Germain des Pres
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Tried not to put my Herald Trib down
Too close to that candle~
But then again, when did “vin blanc”
Turn into “Ol’ Jack Daniels?”

. Barges on the Seine . Back at Hotel Bersolys on …

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Barges on the Seine
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Back at Hotel Bersolys on Thursday night, I was handed the key to the Pissarro room. Jackpot! It’s up in the eaves of the narrow, old five-storey hotel that is typical of the buildings lining my street in Paris, the Rue de Lille. I can see from my small window the roofwork of the city, a view comparable to the rooftops of London–the latter having been seared into our little American brains in the 1960s by Dick Van Dyke and his cavorting chimney sweeps in Mary Poppins. The rooftops here are, of course, distitinctively French–whitewashed and a little more irregular. Lots of chimney pots.

Pissarro happens to be one of my favorite painters. I love his work, and I think he’s a great historical figure. A Jew born in the Caribbean, he was in many was an outsider in late 19th Century France. This put him in a good position to stir things up, of course, which he did as the eminence gris of the Impressionists. He held the group together, mentored Cezanne and Gauguin, and reached out to Van Gogh. I’m honored to have his little room on the fifth floor, right across from the Cezanne room and next door to Degas. I’m sure he’d have approved the floor plan. Over my bed there is an amateur copy of his Boulevard Montmartre.

On Friday, I got up early and took a walk under cool, blue skies along the Seine. I did a little bit of shopping in the book stalls, picking up a CD of Boris Vian’s Paris jazz combo, Quintet du Hot Club de France. A few cuts are avec Django Reinhardt. There is a picture of a smiling Boris holding a pistol in his lap on the cover. More jazz later.

I walked to the Isle de la Cité and made reservations at a restaurant on the Place Dauphine for dinner. The Place is a shady, tree-filled park behind the government buildings near the tip of the island. Isle de la Cité is the original Paris, and it was once called Lutetia. It is dominated by the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Next island up is the quaint Isle de St. Louis. These are relatively small islands in the river.

In the afternoon, I set out to La Défense for an interview with the CEO of a company headquartered there. I ate lunch under the hulking arch there, a modern, rectangular structure with an opening the exact size, or so it is said, of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. La Défense is a monumental celebration of the “glass office tower” and the “state-owned corporation.” Off to the side of the city, behind the Bois-de-Boulogne, la Défense is a weird mix of Space Age and 1960s architectural kitsch. Kind of Franco-Jetson. It fits Paris in that it seems to speak with simultaneous disdain and pomp of big business. As for the arch, we prefer the antique—the cathedral that fits inside it.

La Défense was my “last call” for the week.

Rising up the escalator from the Rue du Bac Metro station near my hotel, one sees the afternoon sun illuminate the green canopy over the Boulevard Raspail. If, in fact, this is happening at the end of a travel work week, the light effect will tend to put the “lime” in “sublime.” The weekend stars you when you’re alone in Paris.

My first thought was to get a date. I was prompted to do so in my favorite art bookstore, Visions Livres D’Art on the Boulevard Saint Germain. In it this evening I saw a 30-Euro book on Delacroix that I’m fighting off buying. It would fill a hole in my library, however, and I will lose the fight. I also saw a book by Serge Poliakoff, whose grand niece, Celine, used to do public relations for a French chemicals and explosives company. She once slipped me her cell phone number and suggested that next time I’m in town we do the Louvre.

Celine is interesting. Her parents didn’t approve of her jointing the military, which was a dream of hers, so she decided to hang out with paratroopers and learn how to jump. She told me once of a jump when her main chute failed to open and her reserve got tangled. She said the voice of her instructor in her helmet radio said something like, “well, that’s it!” No way, she said. She untangled herself while plummeting, which is a good thing. She owns a baby grand piano and plays Chopin. Maybe she’s free tomorrow.

I set off before dinner to a big sports store to buy my daughter Maggie a soccer ball. The store was ferme, and had moved to another part of the city that I need to find tomorrow. I strolled around Notre Dame again, digging the gargoyles and arches. Then I went to dinner.

Le Caveau du Palais Restaurant is the best I’ve been to. The Place Dauphine is brilliant at sunset, and the restaurant service is prompt and still very French—no English on the menu, which is a good sign. There were a lot of super-bourgeois Americans at the table next to mine, but who am I to complain? I had asparagus stalks for starters that were the size of Chicago night sticks. And more duck, served with warmed and puffy potato chips. Great wine and tarte tartin aux pommes. I had a table outside. The walk back to the hotel extended the “brilliance” motif with barges lighting up the river and the sky streaked in jet streams of orange and purple, creating a crazy background for Henry V on horseback near the tip of the Pont Neuf. I caroused the Saint Germain des Pres neighborhood and found some downright jazz at Le Bilboquet near my hotel. There was a trumpet, two guitars, and an upright bass. The trumpeter was frontman, and he sat, Boris Vian-style, with crossed legs and head against the house grand piano. The bassist was tall and his hair was all over the place. They played hot jazz and Dixieland. All this meant more wine, so I wrote a poem. There were black wood beams inside and a lot of red wallpaper and a red spotlight on the band. The hostess at the door was an American.

I have tomorrow off, and hope to get to the l’Orangerie and tell you all about it.

Thanks for reading!
Vanx
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Photos by Verb-Ops
The Pissarro Room view
Notre Dame
The arch at La Défense
Le Caveau du Palais Restaurant
…on the Place Dauphine
The Seine from Pont Neuf
Henry V